Pao-Chi Liao

Biography

Liao received his B.S. in Chemistry and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from National Tsing-Hua
University, Taiwan, and Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Michigan State University in 1995.
He joined the faculty at the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, National
Cheng-Kung University College of Medicine, Taiwan in 1997, where he established the Proteomics
and Metabolomics Research Core Laboratory and was promoted to Distinguished Professor in
2011. His research interests include analytical chemistry, mass spectrometry, proteomics,
biomarker discovery, cancer biomarkers, lung cancer metastasis, and environmental and
occupational health. He is currently serving as the President of Taiwan Proteomics Society.
Liao received his B.S. in Chemistry and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from National Tsing-Hua
University, Taiwan, and Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Michigan State University in 1995.
He joined the faculty at the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, National
Cheng-Kung University College of Medicine, Taiwan in 1997, where he established the Proteomics
and Metabolomics Research Core Laboratory and was promoted to Distinguished Professor in
2011. His research interests include analytical chemistry, mass spectrometry, proteomics,
biomarker discovery, cancer biomarkers, lung cancer metastasis, and environmental and
occupational health. He is currently serving as the President of Taiwan Proteomics Society.

Abstract

Based on comparative proteomic analyses of cell secretomes, it was found that alpha-actinin 4
(ACTN4) is a candidate metastasis-related protein in lung adenocarcinoma cell lines. To
functionally characterize the ACTN4 protein in lung adenocarcinoma cell lines, we used ACTN4
knockdown in a series of analyses, including invasion and migration assays, as well as cellular
microscopic morphology. To study the role of ACTN4 protein in clinical assessment, a total of 84
tissue samples at different stages of lung cancer were tested for ACTN4 expression using
immunohistochemistry, and plasma from 147 healthy control patients and 185 lung cancer
patients was analyzed by home-made ELISA. When ACTN4 protein was knocked down in CL1-5
cells, migration and invasion were strongly suppressed, and the cells changed from an early
mesenchymal morphology into a globular morphology. Assessment of ACTN4 protein expression
in clinical tissue samples showed that the levels differed between cancer tissue and the adjacent
normal tissue; the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) was 0.736.
In plasma, ACTN4 protein levels differed significantly between control and cancer patients, with
an AUC of 0.828. Our results suggest that ACTN4 protein has a strong association with lung
cancer metastasis,